Yes!!
The Cubs' two-year experiment with old-school home jerseys will bite the dust in 2007, when players' names once again will be displayed on their backs.
John McDonough, the Cubs' senior vice president of marketing and broadcasting, said the reason for the change was "the significant amount of roster turnover, plus the emergence of so many rookies."
Of the current 25-man roster, 16 players have been on the team for less than two full seasons. And with Mark Prior and Kerry Wood on the disabled list, Carlos Zambrano is the only Cub remaining from the start of Dusty Baker's regime in April 2003.
In essence, fans could not identify many of the new players without looking at a scorecard, and the old-fashioned scoreboard isn't conducive to associating players with their numbers.
"I think baseball in general has a pretty high turnover from year to year," McDonough said. "And I think with your younger fans, those impressions are made at such an early age, and I think it just makes it a little bit easier [to identify players].
"I think this year, by the time the season ends, we'll have close to 40 players who have been on the roster. We're kind of seeing that trend continue."
The Cubs decided to take names off the jerseys before the start of the 2005 season, when they had many more familiar faces, including Wood, Prior, Zambrano, Greg Maddux, Nomar Garciaparra and Corey Patterson.
It was a concession to the team's history, though many fans didn't care for the move, as the Cubs quickly discovered.
"This whole franchise speaks to tradition, history and nostalgia," McDonough said. "You look back and say that part of that [tradition] was just the numbers on the backs on uniforms without the names. So we experimented with it for a couple of years, and then collectively we thought it was time to bring back [the names]."
John McDonough, the Cubs' senior vice president of marketing and broadcasting, said the reason for the change was "the significant amount of roster turnover, plus the emergence of so many rookies."
Of the current 25-man roster, 16 players have been on the team for less than two full seasons. And with Mark Prior and Kerry Wood on the disabled list, Carlos Zambrano is the only Cub remaining from the start of Dusty Baker's regime in April 2003.
In essence, fans could not identify many of the new players without looking at a scorecard, and the old-fashioned scoreboard isn't conducive to associating players with their numbers.
"I think baseball in general has a pretty high turnover from year to year," McDonough said. "And I think with your younger fans, those impressions are made at such an early age, and I think it just makes it a little bit easier [to identify players].
"I think this year, by the time the season ends, we'll have close to 40 players who have been on the roster. We're kind of seeing that trend continue."
The Cubs decided to take names off the jerseys before the start of the 2005 season, when they had many more familiar faces, including Wood, Prior, Zambrano, Greg Maddux, Nomar Garciaparra and Corey Patterson.
It was a concession to the team's history, though many fans didn't care for the move, as the Cubs quickly discovered.
"This whole franchise speaks to tradition, history and nostalgia," McDonough said. "You look back and say that part of that [tradition] was just the numbers on the backs on uniforms without the names. So we experimented with it for a couple of years, and then collectively we thought it was time to bring back [the names]."